The Carrero Contract - Selling Your Soul (Mafia Romance)

So the storm becomes a hurricane of epic proportions and New York City is stuck in a typhoon that lasts two whole days. I’m stuck in some lifeless, airless apartment on my own with Mico on phone duties should I need anything and yet it’s not like I care.

I’m sick, glands all swollen and body aching with a fever. I toss and turn in bed and just can’t seem to do anything but drift in and out of shallow sleep for small bursts. I don’t know if it’s emotional and I’m just run down, or I should be worrying about something more.

Alexi never used condoms, yet he sleeps with so many women he could have given me something. I never thought of that aspect before, as I used to see his discarded condom wrappers in the bin when he has stayed over, and it never dawned on me he would be careless. I don’t know why he never used them with me and it’s not like I worried. I’m not on birth control anyway, I don’t need to be.

They told me at fifteen when they operated on my internals for eighteen hours straight that the chance of ever conceiving a child was a million to one, my botched back street abortion, that almost killed me, made motherhood impossible. I almost bled to death from the tortuous treatment from some dirty quack that Rick made me go visit. He was so worried that my age would bring in authorities if I showed up at a sexual health clinic with the product of another unprotected rape.

Clients who wouldn’t wear condoms usually didn’t like being asked and always ended up taking me forcefully. By the age of fifteen I was an empty shell and emotionally dead already, being told motherhood was out of the question didn’t bother me in the slightest; why would I reproduce and bring another worthless life into this world.

I don’t bear any outward scars from all the years I endured Rick’s kinks and clients. All his perversions were about making me feel it inside anyway he could. Toys, objects and violent sex and it amazed me that I still found a way to focus on enjoying the act even after he was done with me, but I guess the human brain can normalise anything when it’s done enough.

I only have one visible scar, hidden by a tattoo of a dandelion head on my hip. One mark where Rick slashed me in rage because I wouldn’t hold still while he drunkenly abused me. He smashed his bottle and somehow managed to get me across my hip bone. I had seven stitches and the stem of my tattoo means you never see it.

Cleverly placed, so unless you trace it with your finger it looks like a stem and nothing more.

A dandelion, a weed you can find everywhere. Common and ugly, unremarkable because of how many of them grow, until that is, it morphs into delicate light seed heads that find the wind and fly to freedom on the breeze. Such pretty things that have so much potential to go far, and I told myself that’s what I was and what I was doing when I changed Lisa to Camilla.

Stupid sentiment, stupid tattoo!

barely look at it at

if I had a clean bill of

I was raped without protection. It becomes as natural as breathing to check it regularly.

and it would come to nothing because all good girls in this business take care of little problems without harassing the men who caused them. Rick always used condoms which was my saving grace in the first few years when he abused me exclusively. He just couldn’t stop getting hard for little girls and I thanked my

I was one of the few girls who could take a beating, a brutal rape and a night of being tied and tortured relentlessly, yet still get up and face the world the

tried to break me all those years, and

will book myself into the clinic and be checked, even though Alexi is the only guy I have had sex with in a while. It would

headache and bruised aching glands. If it’s flu then

have slept enough, despite my body trying, and I just feel like a walking zombie. Sleeping pills may be an option to help

shift this overall fatigue, heaviness and cotton wool brain. After weeks of being apartment bound and then stuck here, I maybe just need a little exercise and

trapped in

have ventured this far. It was a struggle to get here, and I am

find myself surrounded by swanky bars and restaurants with how far I have come and duck into the nearest one for a little shelter, so I can catch my breath

ponytail is slick, water running down my back and my jacket is almost transparent it is so moisture filled. I never bought a jacket for extreme weather and this

the effort and the concierge just looks at me like I am clearly in the

bitch in a taupe dress, tapping her menus on her hips asks. Ironically, she looks a lot like me on a good day and if I wasn’t dying of the lurgy I would sass her right back. Instead, I’m already trembling with a mix of exertion, sickness and cold from the rain. Pondering how to get back home without passing out on the way. I feel so

makes her pipe down. It’s one of the reasons I worked so hard on perfecting that well known English dialect over the more common one I was given in life. It exudes class and sexiness and now it is

syllables. It’s why I drop the R in ‘‘Dahling’’ in such a dramatic way … people eat it up like